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NOTE VIII. Human Society (continued)

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Current Errors Concerning the Law of Association

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People cavil much about Ricardo's Law of Association, better known under the name Law of Comparative

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Cost.

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The reason is obvious.

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This law is an offense to all those eager to justify protection and national economic

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isolation from any point of view other than the selfish interests of some producers or

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for the Issues of War Preparedness.

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Ricardo's first aim in expounding this law was to refute an objection raised against

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freedom of international trade.

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The protectionist asks, what under free trade will be the fate of a country in which the

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conditions for any kind of production are less favorable than in all other countries?

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Now in a world in which there is free mobility, not only for products, but no less for

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For Capital Goods and for Labor, a country so little suited for production would cease

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to be used as the seat of any human industry.

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If people fare better without exploiting the comparatively unsatisfactory physical conditions

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of production offered by this country, they will not settle here and will leave it as

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uninhabited as the polar regions, the tundras and the deserts.

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But Ricardo deals with a world whose conditions are determined by settlement in earlier days,

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a world in which capital goods and labor are bound to the soil by definite institutions.

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In such a milieu, free trade, that is, the free mobility of commodities only, cannot

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bring about a state of affairs in which capital and labor are distributed on the surface of

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of the Earth, according to the better or poorer physical opportunities afforded to the productivity

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of labor.

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Here the law of comparative cost comes into operation.

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Each country turns toward those branches of production for which its conditions offer

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comparatively, although not absolutely, the most favorable opportunities.

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For the inhabitants of a country, it is more advantageous to abstain from the exploitation

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of some opportunities which, absolutely and technologically, are more propitious, and

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to import commodities produced abroad under conditions which, absolutely and technologically,

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are less favorable than the unused domestic resources.

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The case is analogous to that of a surgeon who finds it convenient to employ for the

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the Cleaning of the Operating Room and the Instruments, a man whom he excels in this

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performance also, and to devote himself exclusively to surgery, in which his superiority is higher.

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The theorem of comparative cost is in no way connected with the value theory of classical

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economics.

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It does not deal with value or with prices.

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It is an analytic judgment.

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The conclusion is implied in the two propositions that the technically movable factors of production

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differ with regard to their productivity in various places and are institutionally restricted

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in their mobility.

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The theorem, without prejudice to the correctness of its conclusions, can disregard problems

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of valuation because it is free to resort to a set of simple assumptions.

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These are that only two products are to be produced, that these products are freely movable,

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that for the production of each of them two factors are required, that one of these factors,

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it may be either labor or capital goods, is identical in the production of both, while

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the other factor, a specific property of the soil, is different for each of the two processes.

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That the greater scarcity of the factor common to both processes determines the extent of

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the exploitation of the different factor.

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In the frame of these assumptions, which make it possible to establish substitution ratios

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between the expenditure of the common factor and the output, the theorem answers the question

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raised.

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The law of comparative cost is as independent of the classical theory of value as is the

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and the law of returns, which its reasoning resembles.

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In both cases, we can content ourselves with comparing only physical input and physical output.

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With the law of returns, we compare the output of the same product.

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With the law of comparative costs, we compare the output of two different products.

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Such a comparison is feasible because we assume that for the production of each of them,

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Apart from one specific factor, only non-specific factors of the same kind are required.

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Some critics blame the law of comparative cost for this simplification of assumptions.

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They believe that the modern theory of value would require a reformulation of the law in

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conformity with the principles of subjective value.

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Only such a formulation could provide a satisfactory conclusive demonstration.

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However, they do not want to calculate in terms of money.

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They prefer to resort to those methods of utility analysis which they consider a means

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for making value calculations in terms of utility.

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It will be shown in the further progress of our investigation that these attempts to eliminate

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monetary terms from economic calculation are delusive. Their fundamental assumptions are

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untenable and contradictory, and all formulas derived from them are vicious. No method of

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economic calculation is possible other than one based on money prices as determined by

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the market.

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The meaning of the simple assumptions underlying the law of comparative cost is not precisely

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be the same for the modern economists as it was for the classical economists.

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Some adherents of the classical school considered them as the starting point of a theory of

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value in international trade.

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We know now that they were mistaken in this belief.

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Besides, we realize that with regard to the determination of value and of prices, there

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is no difference between domestic and foreign trade.

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What makes people distinguish between the home market and markets abroad is only a difference

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in the data, that is, varying institutional conditions restricting the mobility of factors

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of production and of products.

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If we do not want to deal with the law of comparative cost under the simplified assumptions

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applied by Ricardo, we must openly employ money calculation.

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We must not fall prey to the illusion that a comparison between the expenditure of factors

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of production of various kinds and of the output of products of various kinds can be

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achieved without the aid of money calculation.

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If we consider the case of the surgeon and his handyman, we must say, if the surgeon

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can employ his limited working time for the performance of operations for which he is

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is compensated at $50 per hour. It is to his interest to employ a handyman to keep his

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instruments in good order and to pay him $2 per hour, although this man needs three hours

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to accomplish what the surgeon could do in one hour. In comparing the conditions of two

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countries, we must say, if conditions are such that in England the production of one

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One unit of each of the two commodities, A and B, requires the expenditure of one working

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day of the same kind of labor, while in India, with the same investment of capital for A,

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two days, and for B, three days are required.

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And if capital goods and A and B are freely movable from England to India and vice versa,

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While there is no mobility of labor, wage rates in India in the production of A must

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tend to be 50% and in the production of B 33.3% of the English rates.

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If the English rate is 6 shillings, the rates in India would be the equivalent of 3 shillings

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in the production of A and the equivalent of 2 shillings in the production of B. Such

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Such a discrepancy in the remuneration of labor of the same kind cannot last if there is mobility

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of labor on the domestic Indian labor market.

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Workers would shift from the production of B into the production of A. Their migration

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would tend to lower the remuneration in the A industry and to raise it in the B industry.

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Finally, Indian wage rates would be equal in both industries.

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The production of A would tend to expand and to supplant English competition.

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On the other hand, the production of B would become unprofitable in India and would have

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to be discontinued, while it would expand in England.

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The same reasoning is valid if we assume that the difference in the conditions of production

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consists also or exclusively in the amount of capital investment needed.

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It has been asserted that Ricardo's law was valid only for his age and is of no avail

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for our time, which offers other conditions.

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Ricardo saw the difference between domestic trade and foreign trade in differences in

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the mobility of capital and labor.

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If one assumes that capital, labor and products are movable, then there exists a difference

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It's between regional and inter-regional trade only as far as the cost of transportation

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comes into play.

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Then it is superfluous to develop a theory of international trade as distinguished from

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national trade.

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Capital and labor are distributed on the earth's surface according to the better or poorer

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conditions which the various regions offer to production.

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There are areas more densely populated and better equipped with capital.

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There are others less densely populated and poorer in capital supply.

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There prevails on the whole earth a tendency toward an equalization of wage rates for the

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same kind of labor.

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Ricardo, however, starts from the assumption that there is mobility of capital and labor

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only within each country and not between the various countries.

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He raises the question what the consequences of the free mobility of products must be under

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such conditions.

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If there is no mobility of products either, then every country is economically isolated

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and autarkic and there is no international trade at all.

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The theory of comparative cost answers this question.

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Now Ricardo's assumptions by and large held good for his age.

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Later, in the course of the 19th century, conditions changed.

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The immobility of capital and labor gave way.

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International transfer of capital and labor became more and more common.

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Then came a reaction.

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Today capital and labor are again restricted in their mobility.

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The theory, again, corresponds to the Ricardian assumptions.

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However, the teachings of the classical theory of interregional trade are above any change

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in institutional conditions.

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They enable us to study the problems involved under any imaginable assumptions.

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5.

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The Effects of the Division of Labor.

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The division of labor is the outcome of man's conscious reaction to the multiplicity of

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natural conditions.

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On the other hand, it is itself a factor bringing about differentiation.

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It assigns to the various geographic areas specific functions in the complex of the processes

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of production.

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It makes some areas urban, others rural.

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It locates the various branches of manufacturing, mining and agriculture in different places.

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Still more important, however, is the fact that it intensifies the innate inequality

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of men.

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Exercise and practice of specific tasks adjust individuals better to the requirements of

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their performance.

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Men develop some of their inborn faculties and stunt the development of others.

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Vocational types emerge.

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The Division of Labor splits the various processes of production into minute tasks, many of which can be performed by mechanical devices.

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It is this fact that made the use of machinery possible and brought about the amazing improvements in technical methods of production.

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Mechanization is the fruit of the division of labor, its most beneficial achievement,

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not its motive and fountain spring.

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Power-driven specialized machinery could be employed only in a social environment under the division of labor.

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Every step forward on the road toward the use of more specialized, more refined and more productive machines requires a further specialization of tasks.

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6. The Individual Within Society

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If praxeology speaks of the solitary individual acting on his own behalf only and independent

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of fellow men, it does so for the sake of a better comprehension of the problems of

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social cooperation.

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We do not assert that such isolated, autarkic human beings have ever lived, and that the

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social stage of man's history was preceded by an age of independent individuals roaming

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Man is a fictitious construction.

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Seen from the point of view of the individual, society is the great means for the attainment

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of all his ends.

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The preservation of society is an essential condition of any plans an individual may want

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to realize by any action whatever.

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Even the refractory delinquent, who fails to adjust his conduct to the requirements

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of life within the societal system of cooperation, does not want to miss any of the advantages

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derived from the division of labor.

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He does not consciously aim at the destruction of society.

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He wants to lay his hands on a greater portion of the jointly produced wealth than the social

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order assigns to him.

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He would feel miserable if antisocial behavior were to become universal and its inevitable

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outcome, the return to primitive indigence, resulted.

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It is illusory to maintain that individuals, in renouncing the alleged blessings of a fabulous

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in the favourite state of nature and entering into society, have forgone some advantages

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and have a fair claim to be indemnified for what they have lost.

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The idea that anybody would have fared better under an asocial state of mankind and is wronged

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by the very existence of society is absurd.

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Thanks to the higher productivity of social cooperation, the human species has multiplied

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would far beyond the margin of subsistence offered by the conditions prevailing in ages

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with a rudimentary degree of the division of labor.

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Each man enjoys a standard of living much higher than that of his savage ancestors.

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The natural condition of man is extreme poverty and insecurity.

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It is romantic nonsense to lament the passing of the happy days of primitive barbarism.

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In a state of savagery, the complainants would either not have reached the age of manhood,

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or if they had, they would have lacked the opportunities and amenities provided by civilization.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Frederic Engels, if they had lived in the primitive state which

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they describe with nostalgic yearning, would not have enjoyed the leisure required for

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their studies and for the writing of their books.

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One of the privileges which society affords to the individual is the privilege of living

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in spite of sickness or physical disability.

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Sick animals are doomed.

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Their weakness handicaps them in their attempts to find food and to repel aggression on the

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part of other animals.

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Deaf, nearsighted or crippled savages must perish.

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But such defects do not deprive a man of the opportunity to adjust himself to life in society.

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The majority of our contemporaries are afflicted with some bodily deficiencies which biology considers pathological.

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Our civilization is to a great extent the achievement of such men.

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The eliminative forces of natural selection are greatly reduced under social conditions.

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Hence, some people say that civilization tends to deteriorate the hereditary qualities of the members of society.

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Such judgments are reasonable if one looks at mankind with the eyes of a breeder intent

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upon raising a race of men equipped with certain qualities.

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But society is not a stud farm operated for the production of a definite type of men.

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There is no natural standard to establish what is desirable and what is undesirable

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in the biological evolution of man.

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Any standard chosen is arbitrary, purely subjective, in short, a judgment of value. The terms racial

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improvement and racial degeneration are meaningless when not based on definite plans for the future

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of mankind. It is true, civilized man is adjusted to life in society and not to that of a hunter

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in virgin forests.

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The Fable of the Mystic Communion

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The praxeological theory of society is assailed by the fable of the mystic communion.

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Society, assert the supporters of this doctrine, is not the product of man's purposeful action.

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It is not cooperation and division of tasks.

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It stems from unfathomable depths, from an urge ingrained in man's essential nature.

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It is, says one group, engrossment by the spirit, which is divine reality, and participation,

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by virtue of a unio mystica, in God's power and love.

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Another group sees society as a biological phenomenon.

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It is the work of the voice of the blood, the bond uniting the offspring of common ancestors

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with these ancestors and with one another, and the mystical harmony between the plowman

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and the Soil He Tills.

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That such psychical phenomena are really felt is true.

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There are people who experience the Unio Mystica and place this experience above everything

231
00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:44.920
else, and there are men who are convinced that they hear the voice of the blood and

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smell with heart and soul the unique scent of the cherished soil of their country.

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The mystical experience and the ecstatic rapture are facts which psychology must consider real,

234
00:20:58.200 --> 00:21:01.160
like any other psychical phenomenon.

235
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The error of the communion doctrines does not consist in their assertion that such phenomena

236
00:21:06.440 --> 00:21:13.440
really occur, but in the belief that they are primary facts, not dependent on any rational

237
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consideration.

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The voice of the blood which brings the father close to his child was not heard by those

239
00:21:21.360 --> 00:21:27.320
savages who did not know the causal relation between cohabitation and pregnancy.

240
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Today, as this relation is known to everybody, a man who has full confidence in his wife's

241
00:21:33.780 --> 00:21:36.780
fidelity may perceive it.

242
00:21:36.780 --> 00:21:41.400
But if there are doubts concerning the wife's fidelity, the voice of the blood is of no

243
00:21:41.400 --> 00:21:43.040
use.

244
00:21:43.040 --> 00:21:48.240
Nobody ever ventured to assert that doubts concerning paternity could be resolved by

245
00:21:48.240 --> 00:21:50.480
the voice of the blood.

246
00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:55.240
A mother who has kept watch over her child since its birth can hear the voice of the

247
00:21:55.240 --> 00:21:56.560
blood.

248
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If she loses touch with the infant at an early date, she may later identify it by some bodily

249
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marks, for instance those moles and scars which once were popular with novel writers.

250
00:22:09.020 --> 00:22:14.460
But the blood is mute if such observations and the conclusions derived from them do not

251
00:22:14.460 --> 00:22:16.640
make it speak.

252
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The voice of the blood, contend the German racists, mysteriously unifies all members

253
00:22:22.560 --> 00:22:24.820
of the German people.

254
00:22:24.820 --> 00:22:29.780
But anthropology reveals the fact that the German nation is a mixture of the descendants

255
00:22:29.780 --> 00:22:36.900
of various races, subraces and strains, and not a homogeneous stock descended from a common

256
00:22:36.900 --> 00:22:38.520
ancestry.

257
00:22:38.520 --> 00:22:44.620
The recently Germanized Slav, who has only a short time since changed his paternal family

258
00:22:44.620 --> 00:22:51.520
name for a German-sounding name, believes that he is substantially attached to all Germans.

259
00:22:51.520 --> 00:22:57.020
But he does not experience any such inner urge impelling him to join the ranks of his

260
00:22:57.020 --> 00:23:02.380
brothers or cousins who remained Czechs or Poles.

261
00:23:02.380 --> 00:23:07.300
The voice of the blood is not an original and primordial phenomenon.

262
00:23:07.300 --> 00:23:11.140
It is prompted by rational considerations.

263
00:23:11.140 --> 00:23:16.720
Because a man believes that he is related to other people by a common ancestry, he develops

264
00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:23.520
those feelings and sentiments which are poetically described as the voice of the blood.

265
00:23:23.520 --> 00:23:28.980
The same is true with regard to religious ecstasy and the mysticism of the soil.

266
00:23:28.980 --> 00:23:34.460
The unio mystica of the devout mystic is conditioned by familiarity with the basic

267
00:23:34.460 --> 00:23:37.140
teachings of his religion.

268
00:23:37.140 --> 00:23:43.080
Only a man who has learned about the greatness and glory of God can experience direct communion

269
00:23:43.080 --> 00:23:45.300
with Him.

270
00:23:45.300 --> 00:23:51.340
Mysticism of the soil is connected with the development of definite geopolitical ideas.

271
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Thus it may happen that inhabitants of the plains or the seashore include in the image

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00:23:56.460 --> 00:24:02.560
of the soil with which they claim to be fervently joined and united, mountain districts which

273
00:24:02.560 --> 00:24:08.600
are unfamiliar to them, and to whose conditions they could not adapt themselves, only because

274
00:24:08.600 --> 00:24:14.440
this territory belongs to the political body of which they are members, or would like to

275
00:24:14.440 --> 00:24:16.320
be members.

276
00:24:16.320 --> 00:24:21.520
On the other hand, they often fail to include in this image of the soil, whose voice they

277
00:24:21.520 --> 00:24:28.040
claim to hear, neighboring areas of a geographic structure very similar to that of their own

278
00:24:28.040 --> 00:24:34.000
History, if these areas happen to belong to a foreign nation.

279
00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.120
The various members of a nation or linguistic group and the clusters they form are not always

280
00:24:40.120 --> 00:24:43.360
united in friendship and goodwill.

281
00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:49.160
The history of every nation is a record of mutual dislike and even hatred between its

282
00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:50.760
subdivisions.

283
00:24:50.760 --> 00:24:55.880
Think of the English and the Scotch, the Yankees and the Southerners, the Prussians and the

284
00:24:55.880 --> 00:24:57.640
Bavarians.

285
00:24:57.640 --> 00:25:04.880
It was ideologies that overcame such animosities and inspired all members of a nation or linguistic

286
00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:10.840
group with those feelings of community and belonging together which present-day nationalists

287
00:25:10.840 --> 00:25:15.000
consider a natural and original phenomenon.

288
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:21.940
The mutual sexual attraction of male and female is inherent in man's animal nature and independent

289
00:25:21.940 --> 00:25:24.780
of any thinking and theorizing.

290
00:25:24.780 --> 00:25:30.660
It is permissible to call it original, vegetative, instinctive, or mysterious.

291
00:25:30.660 --> 00:25:35.880
There is no harm in asserting metaphorically that it makes one being out of two.

292
00:25:35.880 --> 00:25:40.760
We may call it a mystic communion of two bodies, a community.

293
00:25:40.760 --> 00:25:48.120
However, neither cohabitation nor what precedes it and follows generates social cooperation

294
00:25:48.120 --> 00:25:51.100
and societal modes of life.

295
00:25:51.100 --> 00:25:57.520
The animals, too, join together in mating, but they have not developed social relations.

296
00:25:57.520 --> 00:26:01.560
Family life is not merely a product of sexual intercourse.

297
00:26:01.560 --> 00:26:07.160
It is by no means natural and necessary that parents and children live together in the

298
00:26:07.160 --> 00:26:10.300
way in which they do in the family.

299
00:26:10.300 --> 00:26:15.180
The mating relation need not result in a family organization.

300
00:26:15.180 --> 00:26:20.580
The human family is an outcome of thinking, planning and acting.

301
00:26:20.580 --> 00:26:25.960
It is this very fact which distinguishes it radically from those animal groups which we

302
00:26:25.960 --> 00:26:30.520
call per analogium, animal families.

303
00:26:30.520 --> 00:26:37.300
The mystical experience of communion or community is not the source of societal relations but

304
00:26:37.300 --> 00:26:39.640
their product.

305
00:26:39.640 --> 00:26:45.080
The counterpart of the fable of the mystical communion is the fable of a natural and original

306
00:26:45.080 --> 00:26:49.000
repulsion between races or nations.

307
00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:55.040
It is asserted that an instinct teaches man to distinguish congeners from strangers and

308
00:26:55.040 --> 00:26:57.920
to detest the latter.

309
00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:03.800
Millions of noble races abominate any contact with members of lower races.

310
00:27:03.800 --> 00:27:09.400
To refute this statement, one need only mention the fact of racial mixture.

311
00:27:09.400 --> 00:27:15.280
As there are in present-day Europe no pure stocks, we must conclude that between members

312
00:27:15.280 --> 00:27:20.700
of the various stocks which once settled in that continent, there was sexual attraction

313
00:27:20.700 --> 00:27:23.280
and not repulsion.

314
00:27:23.280 --> 00:27:28.440
Races of mulattoes and other half-breeds are living counter-evidence to the assertion that

315
00:27:28.440 --> 00:27:34.280
there exists a natural repulsion between the various races.

316
00:27:34.280 --> 00:27:39.880
Like the mystical sense of communion, racial hatred is not a natural phenomenon innate

317
00:27:39.880 --> 00:27:40.880
in man.

318
00:27:40.880 --> 00:27:44.080
It is the product of ideologies.

319
00:27:44.080 --> 00:27:50.480
But even if such a thing as a natural and inborn hatred between various races existed,

320
00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:56.200
It would not render social cooperation futile and would not invalidate Ricardo's Theory

321
00:27:56.200 --> 00:27:58.700
of Association.

322
00:27:58.700 --> 00:28:04.120
Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment

323
00:28:04.120 --> 00:28:06.340
to love one another.

324
00:28:06.340 --> 00:28:11.080
People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love

325
00:28:11.080 --> 00:28:12.320
one another.

326
00:28:12.320 --> 00:28:17.080
They cooperate because this best serves their own interests.

327
00:28:17.080 --> 00:28:23.900
Neither love, nor charity, nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness

328
00:28:23.900 --> 00:28:30.320
is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to

329
00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:36.580
respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men, and to substitute peaceful collaboration

330
00:28:36.580 --> 00:28:40.040
for enmity and conflict.

331
00:28:40.040 --> 00:28:42.160
7.

332
00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:45.260
THE GREAT SOCIETY

333
00:28:45.260 --> 00:28:49.460
But every inter-human relation is a social relation.

334
00:28:49.460 --> 00:28:54.940
When groups of men rush upon one another in a war of outright extermination, when men

335
00:28:54.940 --> 00:29:01.400
fight against men as mercilessly as they crush pernicious animals and plants, there is between

336
00:29:01.400 --> 00:29:08.580
the fighting parties reciprocal effect and mutual relation, but no society.

337
00:29:08.580 --> 00:29:14.260
Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's

338
00:29:14.260 --> 00:29:18.940
success as a means for the attainment of his own.

339
00:29:18.940 --> 00:29:24.660
The struggles in which primitive hordes and tribes fought one another for watering places,

340
00:29:24.660 --> 00:29:31.260
hunting and fishing grounds, pastures and booty, were such pitiless wars of annihilation.

341
00:29:31.260 --> 00:29:33.380
They were total wars.

342
00:29:33.380 --> 00:29:38.220
So in the nineteenth century were the first encounters of Europeans with the Aborigines

343
00:29:38.220 --> 00:29:41.620
of territories newly made accessible.

344
00:29:41.620 --> 00:29:47.780
But already in the primeval age, long before the time of which historical records convey

345
00:29:47.780 --> 00:29:52.900
information, another mode of procedure began to develop.

346
00:29:52.900 --> 00:29:59.820
People preserved even in warfare some rudiments of social relations previously established.

347
00:29:59.820 --> 00:30:04.940
In fighting against peoples with whom they never before had had any contact, they began

348
00:30:04.940 --> 00:30:11.140
to take into account the idea that between human beings, notwithstanding their immediate

349
00:30:11.140 --> 00:30:18.860
and Enmity, a later arrangement and cooperation is possible. Wars were waged to hurt the

350
00:30:18.860 --> 00:30:26.160
foe, but the hostile acts were no longer merciless and pitiless in the full sense of these terms.

351
00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:31.560
The belligerents began to respect certain limits, which in a struggle against men, as

352
00:30:31.560 --> 00:30:38.760
differentiated from that against beasts, should not be transcended. Above the implacable hatred

353
00:30:38.760 --> 00:30:45.680
and the Frenzy of Destruction and Annihilation, a societal element, began to prevail.

354
00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:51.200
The idea emerged that every human adversary should be considered as a potential partner

355
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:57.060
in a future cooperation, and that this fact should not be neglected in the conduct of

356
00:30:57.060 --> 00:30:59.880
military operations.

357
00:30:59.880 --> 00:31:05.800
War was no longer considered the normal state of inter-human relations.

358
00:31:05.800 --> 00:31:10.840
People recognize that peaceful cooperation is the best means to carry on the struggle

359
00:31:10.840 --> 00:31:13.600
for biological survival.

360
00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:19.180
We may even say that as soon as people realize that it is more advantageous to enslave the

361
00:31:19.180 --> 00:31:25.160
defeated than to kill them, the warriors, while still fighting, gave thought to the

362
00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:28.480
aftermath, the peace.

363
00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:34.600
Enslavement was, by and large, a preliminary step toward cooperation.

364
00:31:34.600 --> 00:31:41.260
The ascendancy of the idea that even in war, not every act is to be considered permissible,

365
00:31:41.260 --> 00:31:48.300
that there are legitimate and illicit acts of warfare, that there are laws, that is,

366
00:31:48.300 --> 00:31:53.900
societal relationships which are above all nations, even above those momentarily fighting

367
00:31:53.900 --> 00:32:02.080
one another, has finally established the Great Society, embracing all men and all nations.

368
00:32:02.080 --> 00:32:09.360
The various regional societies were merged into one ecumenical society.

369
00:32:09.360 --> 00:32:14.080
Belligerents who do not wage war savagely in the manner of beasts, but according to

370
00:32:14.080 --> 00:32:20.600
human and social rules of warfare, renounce the use of some methods of destruction in

371
00:32:20.600 --> 00:32:25.400
order to attain the same concessions on the part of their foes.

372
00:32:25.400 --> 00:32:32.400
As far as such rules are complied with, social relations exist between the fighting parties.

373
00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:38.480
The hostile acts themselves are not only asocial, but antisocial.

374
00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:44.120
It is a mistake to define the term social relationships in such a way as to include

375
00:32:44.120 --> 00:32:50.760
actions which aim at other people's annihilation and at the frustration of their actions.

376
00:32:50.760 --> 00:32:56.720
Where the only relations between men are those directed at mutual detriment, there is neither

377
00:32:56.720 --> 00:33:01.720
society nor societal relations.

378
00:33:01.720 --> 00:33:04.760
Society is not merely interaction.

379
00:33:04.760 --> 00:33:10.480
There is interaction, reciprocal influence, between all parts of the universe, between

380
00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:16.120
the wolf and the sheep he devours, between the germ and the man it kills, between the

381
00:33:16.120 --> 00:33:22.380
The Falling Stone and the Thing Upon Which It Falls Society, on the other hand, always

382
00:33:22.380 --> 00:33:29.360
involves men acting in cooperation with other men in order to let all participants attain

383
00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:32.280
their own ends.

384
00:33:32.280 --> 00:33:34.600
8.

385
00:33:34.600 --> 00:33:41.000
The Instinct of Aggression and Destruction It has been asserted that man is a beast of

386
00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:49.520
of Prey whose inborn natural instincts impel him to fight, to kill and to destroy.

387
00:33:49.520 --> 00:33:55.580
Civilization in creating unnatural humanitarian laxity which alienates man from his animal

388
00:33:55.580 --> 00:34:01.020
origin has tried to quell these impulses and appetites.

389
00:34:01.020 --> 00:34:07.120
It has made civilized man a decadent weakling who is ashamed of his animality and proudly

390
00:34:07.120 --> 00:34:11.100
calls his depravity true humaneness.

391
00:34:11.100 --> 00:34:16.400
In order to prevent further degeneration of the species man, it is imperative to free

392
00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:20.300
him from the pernicious effects of civilization.

393
00:34:20.300 --> 00:34:25.360
For civilization is merely a cunning invention of inferior men.

394
00:34:25.360 --> 00:34:29.520
These underlings are too weak to be a match for the vigorous heroes.

395
00:34:29.520 --> 00:34:35.120
They are too cowardly to endure the well-deserved punishment of complete annihilation.

396
00:34:35.120 --> 00:34:40.560
And they are too lazy and too insolent to serve the masters as slaves.

397
00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:43.540
Thus they have resorted to a tricky makeshift.

398
00:34:43.540 --> 00:34:49.440
They have reversed the eternal standards of value, absolutely fixed by the immutable laws

399
00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:51.000
of the universe.

400
00:34:51.000 --> 00:34:57.120
They have propagated a morality which calls their own inferiority, virtue, and the eminence

401
00:34:57.120 --> 00:35:00.280
of the noble heroes, vice.

402
00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:07.300
This moral rebellion of the slaves must be undone by a transvaluation of all values.

403
00:35:07.300 --> 00:35:13.520
The ethics of the slaves, this shameful product of the resentment of weaklings, must be entirely

404
00:35:13.520 --> 00:35:14.880
discarded.

405
00:35:14.880 --> 00:35:21.280
The ethics of the strong, or, properly speaking, the nullification of any ethical restriction,

406
00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:24.080
must be substituted for it.

407
00:35:24.080 --> 00:35:32.340
One must become a worthy scion of his ancestors, the noble beasts of days gone by.

408
00:35:32.340 --> 00:35:37.900
It is usual to call such doctrines social or sociological Darwinism.

409
00:35:37.900 --> 00:35:42.880
We need not decide here whether this terminology is appropriate or not.

410
00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:49.640
At any rate, it is a mistake to assign the epithets evolutionary and biological to teachings

411
00:35:49.640 --> 00:36:06.640
are the conditions which blithely disparage the whole of mankind's history from the ages in which man began to lift himself above the purely animal existence of his non-human ancestors as a continuous progression toward degeneration and decay.

412
00:36:06.640 --> 00:36:25.640
Biology does not provide any standard for the appraisal of changes occurring within living beings other than whether or not these changes succeeded in adjusting the individuals to the conditions of their environment, and thereby in improving their chances in the struggle for survival.

413
00:36:25.640 --> 00:36:33.640
It is a fact that civilization, when judged from this point of view, is to be considered a benefit and not an evil.

414
00:36:33.640 --> 00:36:44.140
It has enabled man to hold his own in the struggle against all other living beings, both the big beasts of prey and the even more pernicious microbes.

415
00:36:44.140 --> 00:36:55.140
It has multiplied man's means of sustenance. It has made the average man taller, more agile and more versatile, and it has stretched his average length of life.

416
00:36:55.140 --> 00:37:00.060
It has given man the uncontested mastery of the earth.

417
00:37:00.060 --> 00:37:05.540
It has multiplied population figures and raised the standard of living to a level never dreamed

418
00:37:05.540 --> 00:37:10.120
of by the crude cave dwellers of prehistoric ages.

419
00:37:10.120 --> 00:37:15.620
It is true that this evolution stunted the development of certain knacks and gifts which

420
00:37:15.620 --> 00:37:20.860
were once useful in the struggle for survival and have lost their usefulness under changed

421
00:37:20.860 --> 00:37:22.660
conditions.

422
00:37:22.660 --> 00:37:27.740
On the other hand, it developed other talents and skills which are indispensable for life

423
00:37:27.740 --> 00:37:29.980
within the frame of society.

424
00:37:29.980 --> 00:37:36.960
However, a biological and evolutionary view must not cavil at such changes.

425
00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:42.800
For primitive man, hard fists and pugnacity were as useful as the ability to be clever

426
00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:47.820
at arithmetic and to spell correctly are for modern man.

427
00:37:47.820 --> 00:37:54.340
It is quite arbitrary, and certainly contrary to any biological standard, to call only those

428
00:37:54.340 --> 00:38:01.200
characteristics which were useful to primitive man natural and adequate to human nature,

429
00:38:01.200 --> 00:38:07.700
and to condemn the talents and skills badly needed by civilized man as marks of degeneration

430
00:38:07.700 --> 00:38:10.860
and biological deterioration.

431
00:38:10.860 --> 00:38:17.000
To advise man to return to the physical and intellectual features of his prehistoric ancestors

432
00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:24.100
is no more reasonable than to ask him to renounce his upright gait and to grow a tail again.

433
00:38:24.100 --> 00:38:29.920
It is noteworthy that the men who were foremost in extolling the eminence of the savage impulses

434
00:38:29.920 --> 00:38:35.600
of our barbarian forefathers were so frail that their bodies would not have come up to

435
00:38:35.600 --> 00:38:38.360
the requirements of dangerous living.

436
00:38:38.360 --> 00:38:44.080
Nietzsche, even before his mental breakdown, was so sickly that the only climate he could

437
00:38:44.080 --> 00:38:49.700
stand was that of the Engadine Valley and of some Italian districts.

438
00:38:49.700 --> 00:38:55.680
He would not have been in a position to accomplish his work if civilized society had not protected

439
00:38:55.680 --> 00:39:00.160
his delicate nerves against the roughness of life.

440
00:39:00.160 --> 00:39:05.740
The apostles of violence wrote their books under the sheltering roof of bourgeois security

441
00:39:05.740 --> 00:39:08.640
which they derided and disparaged.

442
00:39:08.640 --> 00:39:13.500
They were free to publish their incendiary sermons because the liberalism which they

443
00:39:13.500 --> 00:39:17.180
They Scorned Safeguarded Freedom of the Press.

444
00:39:17.180 --> 00:39:21.640
They would have been desperate if they had had to forego the blessings of the civilization

445
00:39:21.640 --> 00:39:24.360
scorned by their philosophy.

446
00:39:24.360 --> 00:39:30.380
And what a spectacle was that timid writer Georges Sorrel, who went so far in his praise

447
00:39:30.380 --> 00:39:37.360
of brutality as to blame the modern system of education for weakening man's inborn tendencies

448
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:40.160
toward violence.

449
00:39:40.160 --> 00:39:46.240
One may admit that in primitive man the propensity for killing and destroying and the disposition

450
00:39:46.240 --> 00:39:48.920
for cruelty were innate.

451
00:39:48.920 --> 00:39:54.420
We may also assume that under the conditions of earlier ages the inclination for aggression

452
00:39:54.420 --> 00:39:59.040
and murder was favorable to the preservation of life.

453
00:39:59.040 --> 00:40:01.740
Man was once a brutal beast.

454
00:40:01.740 --> 00:40:08.060
There is no need to investigate whether prehistoric man was a carnivore or an herbivore.

455
00:40:08.060 --> 00:40:12.720
But one must not forget that he was physically a weak animal.

456
00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:17.120
He would not have been a match for the big beasts of prey if he had not been equipped

457
00:40:17.120 --> 00:40:20.700
with a peculiar weapon, reason.

458
00:40:20.700 --> 00:40:26.560
The fact that man is a reasonable being, that he therefore does not yield without inhibitions

459
00:40:26.560 --> 00:40:32.740
to every impulse, but arranges his conduct according to reasonable deliberation, must

460
00:40:32.740 --> 00:40:38.160
should not be called unnatural from a zoological point of view.

461
00:40:38.160 --> 00:40:45.040
Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses,

462
00:40:45.040 --> 00:40:52.120
desires and appetites, forgoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent.

463
00:40:52.120 --> 00:40:58.080
In order not to endanger the working of social cooperation, man is forced to abstain from

464
00:40:58.080 --> 00:41:05.640
from satisfying those desires whose satisfaction would hinder establishment of societal institutions.

465
00:41:05.640 --> 00:41:09.280
There is no doubt that such a renunciation is painful.

466
00:41:09.280 --> 00:41:12.480
However, man has made his choice.

467
00:41:12.480 --> 00:41:18.340
He has renounced the satisfaction of some desires incompatible with social life and

468
00:41:18.340 --> 00:41:24.520
has given priority to the satisfaction of those desires which can be realized only or

469
00:41:24.520 --> 00:41:29.520
are in a more plentiful way under a system of the division of labor.

470
00:41:29.520 --> 00:41:35.960
He has entered upon the way toward civilization, social cooperation and wealth.

471
00:41:35.960 --> 00:41:39.320
This decision is not irrevocable and final.

472
00:41:39.320 --> 00:41:43.960
The choice of the fathers does not impair the son's freedom to choose.

473
00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:46.600
They can reverse the resolution.

474
00:41:46.600 --> 00:41:53.480
Every day they can proceed to the transvaluation of values and prefer barbarism to civilization,

475
00:41:53.480 --> 00:42:01.200
or as some authors say, the soul to the intellect, myths to reason and violence to peace.

476
00:42:01.200 --> 00:42:03.720
But they must choose.

477
00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:09.400
It is impossible to have things incompatible with one another.

478
00:42:09.400 --> 00:42:15.520
Science from the point of view of its valuational neutrality does not blame the apostles of the

479
00:42:15.520 --> 00:42:22.260
gospel of violence for praising the frenzy of murder and the mad delights of sadism.

480
00:42:22.260 --> 00:42:27.820
Few judgments are subjective, and liberal society grants to everybody the right to express

481
00:42:27.820 --> 00:42:30.940
his sentiments freely.

482
00:42:30.940 --> 00:42:35.820
Civilization has not extirpated the original tendency toward aggression, bloodthirstiness

483
00:42:35.820 --> 00:42:40.020
and cruelty which characterized primitive man.

484
00:42:40.020 --> 00:42:45.460
In many civilized men they are dormant and burst forth as soon as the restraints developed

485
00:42:45.460 --> 00:42:48.640
by civilization give way.

486
00:42:48.640 --> 00:42:54.360
After the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, the newspapers continually

487
00:42:54.360 --> 00:43:00.320
report abominable crimes manifesting the latent urges toward bestiality.

488
00:43:00.320 --> 00:43:05.840
The most popular novels and moving pictures are those dealing with bloodshed and violent

489
00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:07.200
acts.

490
00:43:07.200 --> 00:43:11.860
Bullfights and cockfights attract large crowds.

491
00:43:11.860 --> 00:43:18.240
If an author says, The rabble thirst for blood, and I with them, he may be no less right than

492
00:43:18.240 --> 00:43:22.560
in Asserting that Primitive Man, too, took delight in killing.

493
00:43:22.560 --> 00:43:28.440
But he errs if he passes over the fact that the satisfaction of such sadistic desires

494
00:43:28.440 --> 00:43:35.320
impairs the existence of society, or if he asserts that true civilization and the good

495
00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:41.600
society are an achievement of people blithely indulging in their passion for violence, murder

496
00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:49.360
and Cruelty, that the repression of the impulses toward brutality endangers mankind's evolution,

497
00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:56.360
and that a substitution of barbarism for humanitarianism would save man from degeneration.

498
00:43:56.360 --> 00:44:04.080
The social division of labor and cooperation rests upon conciliatory settlement of disputes.

499
00:44:04.080 --> 00:44:10.960
Not war, as Heraclitus said, but peace is the source of all social relations.

500
00:44:10.960 --> 00:44:16.060
To man desires other than that for bloodshed are inborn.

501
00:44:16.060 --> 00:44:22.320
If he wants to satisfy these other desires he must forgo his urge to kill.

502
00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:28.560
He who wants to preserve life and health as well and as long as possible must realize

503
00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:34.400
that respect for other people's lives and health better serves his aim than the opposite

504
00:44:34.400 --> 00:44:36.560
mode of conduct.

505
00:44:36.560 --> 00:44:42.960
One may regret that such is the state of affairs, but no such lamentations can alter the hard

506
00:44:42.960 --> 00:44:44.480
facts.

507
00:44:44.480 --> 00:44:49.960
It is useless to censure this statement by referring to irrationality.

508
00:44:49.960 --> 00:44:56.280
All instinctive impulses defy examination by reason because reason deals only with the

509
00:44:56.280 --> 00:45:01.860
means for attaining ends sought, and not with ultimate ends.

510
00:45:01.860 --> 00:45:07.620
But what distinguishes man from other animals is precisely that he does not yield without

511
00:45:07.620 --> 00:45:12.020
any will of his own to an instinctive urge.

512
00:45:12.020 --> 00:45:18.420
Man uses reason in order to choose between the incompatible satisfactions of conflicting

513
00:45:18.420 --> 00:45:20.380
desires.

514
00:45:20.380 --> 00:45:24.520
One must not tell the masses, indulge in your urge for murder.

515
00:45:24.520 --> 00:45:28.740
It is genuinely human and best serves your well-being.

516
00:45:28.740 --> 00:45:36.220
One must tell them, if you satisfy your thirst for blood, you must forgo many other desires.

517
00:45:36.220 --> 00:45:41.540
You want to eat, to drink, to live in fine homes, to clothe yourselves, and a thousand

518
00:45:41.540 --> 00:45:45.940
other things, which only society can provide.

519
00:45:45.940 --> 00:45:48.140
You cannot have everything.

520
00:45:48.140 --> 00:45:50.300
You must choose.

521
00:45:50.300 --> 00:45:56.000
The dangerous life and the frenzy of sadism may please you, but they are incompatible

522
00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:02.320
with the security and plenty which you do not want to miss either.

523
00:46:02.320 --> 00:46:09.000
Praxeology as a science cannot encroach upon the individual's right to choose and to act.

524
00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:14.680
The final decisions rest with acting men, not with the theorists.

525
00:46:14.680 --> 00:46:20.880
Science's contribution to life and action does not consist in establishing value judgments,

526
00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:27.760
in Clarification of the Conditions Under Which Man Must Act and in Elucidation of the Effects

527
00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:30.520
of Various Modes of Action.

528
00:46:30.520 --> 00:46:36.120
It puts at the disposal of acting man all the information he needs in order to make

529
00:46:36.120 --> 00:46:40.380
his choices in full awareness of their consequences.

530
00:46:40.380 --> 00:46:44.800
It prepares an estimate of cost and yield, as it were.

531
00:46:44.800 --> 00:46:49.980
It would fail in this task if it were to omit from this statement one of the items which

532
00:46:49.980 --> 00:46:55.940
Which Could Be of Influence in People's Choices and Decisions

533
00:46:55.940 --> 00:47:03.220
Current Misinterpretations of Modern Natural Science, Especially of Darwinism

534
00:47:03.220 --> 00:47:08.620
Some present-day anti-liberals, both of the right-wing and of the left-wing variety, base

535
00:47:08.620 --> 00:47:14.180
their teachings on misinterpretations of the achievements of modern biology.

536
00:47:14.180 --> 00:47:15.900
1.

537
00:47:15.900 --> 00:47:16.900
Men Are Unequal

538
00:47:16.900 --> 00:47:24.320
Eighteenth-century liberalism and likewise present-day egalitarianism start from the

539
00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:29.780
self-evident truth that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their

540
00:47:29.780 --> 00:47:33.300
Creator with certain unalienable rights.

541
00:47:33.300 --> 00:47:39.340
However, say the advocates of a biological philosophy of society, natural science has

542
00:47:39.340 --> 00:47:44.100
demonstrated in an irrefutable way that men are different.

543
00:47:44.100 --> 00:47:49.900
There is no room left in the framework of an experimental observation of natural phenomena

544
00:47:49.900 --> 00:47:53.540
for such a concept as natural rights.

545
00:47:53.540 --> 00:47:59.500
Nature is unfeeling and insensible with regard to any being's life and happiness.

546
00:47:59.500 --> 00:48:02.740
Nature is iron necessity and regularity.

547
00:48:02.740 --> 00:48:08.380
It is metaphysical nonsense to link together the slippery and vague notion of liberty and

548
00:48:08.380 --> 00:48:12.260
the unchangeable, absolute laws of cosmic order.

549
00:48:12.260 --> 00:48:18.700
Thus, the fundamental idea of liberalism is unmasked as a fallacy.

550
00:48:18.700 --> 00:48:24.460
Now it is true that the liberal and democratic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries drew

551
00:48:24.460 --> 00:48:30.300
a great part of its strength from the doctrine of natural law and the innate, imprescriptible

552
00:48:30.300 --> 00:48:32.960
rights of the individual.

553
00:48:32.960 --> 00:48:40.660
These ideas, first developed by ancient philosophy and Jewish theology, permeated Christian thinking.

554
00:48:40.660 --> 00:48:46.100
Some anti-Catholic sects made them the focal point of their political programs.

555
00:48:46.100 --> 00:48:50.340
A long line of eminent philosophers substantiated them.

556
00:48:50.340 --> 00:48:56.780
They became popular and were the most powerful moving force in the pro-democratic evolution.

557
00:48:56.780 --> 00:48:59.380
They are still supported today.

558
00:48:59.380 --> 00:49:04.940
Their advocates do not concern themselves with the incontestable fact that God or nature

559
00:49:04.940 --> 00:49:10.900
did not create men equal, since many are born hale and hearty, while others are crippled

560
00:49:10.900 --> 00:49:12.740
and deformed.

561
00:49:12.740 --> 00:49:20.960
With them, all differences between men are due to education, opportunity and social institutions.

562
00:49:20.960 --> 00:49:26.100
But the teachings of utilitarian philosophy and classical economics have nothing at all

563
00:49:26.100 --> 00:49:29.860
to do with the doctrine of natural right.

564
00:49:29.860 --> 00:49:34.660
With them, the only point that matters is social utility.

565
00:49:34.660 --> 00:49:40.300
They recommend popular government, private property, tolerance and freedom, not because

566
00:49:40.300 --> 00:49:44.940
they are natural and just, but because they are beneficial.

567
00:49:44.940 --> 00:49:51.180
The core of Ricardo's philosophy is the demonstration that social cooperation and division of labor

568
00:49:51.180 --> 00:49:58.260
between men who are in every regard superior and more efficient, and men who are in every

569
00:49:58.260 --> 00:50:04.460
regard inferior and less efficient, is beneficial to both groups.

570
00:50:04.460 --> 00:50:10.380
Anthem, the radical, shouted, Natural rights is simple nonsense.

571
00:50:10.380 --> 00:50:14.800
Natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense.

572
00:50:14.800 --> 00:50:20.020
With him, the sole object of government ought to be the greatest happiness of the greatest

573
00:50:20.020 --> 00:50:22.940
possible number of the community.

574
00:50:22.940 --> 00:50:29.140
Accordingly, in investigating what ought to be right, he does not care about preconceived

575
00:50:29.140 --> 00:50:36.320
Ideas Concerning God's or Nature's Plans and Intentions Forever Hidden to Mortal Men.

576
00:50:36.320 --> 00:50:44.100
He is intent upon discovering what best serves the promotion of human welfare and happiness.

577
00:50:44.100 --> 00:50:49.780
Malthus showed that nature, in limiting the means of subsistence, does not accord to any

578
00:50:49.780 --> 00:50:56.100
living being a right of existence, and that by indulging heedlessly in the natural impulse

579
00:50:56.100 --> 00:51:01.780
In the course of proliferation, man would never have risen above the verge of starvation.

580
00:51:01.780 --> 00:51:07.800
He contended that human civilization and well-being could develop only to the extent that man

581
00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:13.120
learn to reign his sexual appetites by moral restraint.

582
00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:19.540
The utilitarians do not combat arbitrary government and privileges because they are against natural

583
00:51:19.540 --> 00:51:24.100
law, but because they are detrimental to prosperity.

584
00:51:24.100 --> 00:51:29.880
They recommend equality under the civil law not because men are equal, but because such

585
00:51:29.880 --> 00:51:33.660
a policy is beneficial to the commonweal.

586
00:51:33.660 --> 00:51:40.440
In rejecting the illusory notions of natural law and human equality, modern biology only

587
00:51:40.440 --> 00:51:46.740
repeated what the utilitarian champions of liberalism and democracy long before had taught

588
00:51:46.740 --> 00:51:49.600
in a much more persuasive way.

589
00:51:49.600 --> 00:51:55.760
It is obvious that no biological doctrine can ever invalidate what utilitarian philosophy

590
00:51:55.760 --> 00:52:02.160
says about the social utility of democratic government, private property, freedom and

591
00:52:02.160 --> 00:52:05.000
equality under the law.

592
00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:11.120
The present-day prevalence of doctrines approving social disintegration and violent conflict

593
00:52:11.120 --> 00:52:17.760
is not the result of an alleged adaptation of social philosophy to the findings of biology,

594
00:52:17.760 --> 00:52:24.560
of the Almost Universal Rejection of Utilitarian Philosophy and Economic Theory.

595
00:52:24.560 --> 00:52:31.600
People have substituted an ideology of irreconcilable class conflict and international conflict

596
00:52:31.600 --> 00:52:38.260
for the orthodox ideology of the harmony of the rightly understood, that is, long-run

597
00:52:38.260 --> 00:52:43.480
interests of all individuals, social groups and nations.

598
00:52:43.480 --> 00:52:48.620
Darwin are fighting one another because they are convinced that the extermination and liquidation

599
00:52:48.620 --> 00:52:53.120
of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

600
00:52:53.120 --> 00:52:56.920
2.

601
00:52:56.920 --> 00:53:00.940
The Social Implications of Darwinism

602
00:53:00.940 --> 00:53:07.340
The theory of evolution as expounded by Darwin, says a school of social Darwinism, has clearly

603
00:53:07.340 --> 00:53:13.260
demonstrated that in nature there are no such things as peace and respect for the lives

604
00:53:13.260 --> 00:53:23.260
In nature there is always struggle and merciless annihilation of the weak who do not succeed in defending themselves.

605
00:53:23.260 --> 00:53:35.260
Liberalism's plans for eternal peace, both in domestic and in foreign relations, are the outcome of an illusory rationalism contrary to the natural order.

606
00:53:35.260 --> 00:53:42.260
However, the notion of the struggle for existence, as Darwin borrowed it from Malthus and applied it in his theory,

607
00:53:42.260 --> 00:53:49.460
in his theory is to be understood in a metaphorical sense. Its meaning is that a living being

608
00:53:49.460 --> 00:53:56.260
actively resists the forces detrimental to its own life. This resistance, if it is to

609
00:53:56.260 --> 00:54:02.220
succeed, must be appropriate to the environmental conditions in which the being concerned has

610
00:54:02.220 --> 00:54:08.940
to hold its own. It need not always be a war of extermination, such as in the relations

611
00:54:08.940 --> 00:54:12.900
Reasons Between Men and Morbific Microbes

612
00:54:12.900 --> 00:54:18.380
Reason has demonstrated that for man the most adequate means of improving his condition

613
00:54:18.380 --> 00:54:22.300
is social cooperation and division of labor.

614
00:54:22.300 --> 00:54:26.940
They are man's foremost tool in his struggle for survival.

615
00:54:26.940 --> 00:54:30.140
But they can work only where there is peace.

616
00:54:30.140 --> 00:54:37.260
Wars, civil wars and revolutions are detrimental to man's success in the struggle for existence

617
00:54:37.260 --> 00:54:50.420
3. Reason and Rational Behavior are Unnatural

618
00:54:50.420 --> 00:54:56.420
Christian theology deprecated the animal functions of man's body and depicted the soul as something

619
00:54:56.420 --> 00:55:03.700
outside of all biological phenomena. In an excessive reaction against this philosophy,

620
00:55:03.700 --> 00:55:09.980
Some moderns are prone to disparage everything in which man differs from other animals.

621
00:55:09.980 --> 00:55:15.940
In their eyes, human reason is inferior to the animal instincts and impulses.

622
00:55:15.940 --> 00:55:19.320
It is unnatural and therefore bad.

623
00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:26.060
With them, the terms rationalism and rational behavior have an approprious connotation.

624
00:55:26.060 --> 00:55:32.080
The perfect man, the real man, is a being who obeys his primordial instincts more than

625
00:55:32.080 --> 00:55:34.400
and His Reason.

626
00:55:34.400 --> 00:55:40.840
The obvious truth is that reason, man's most characteristic feature, is also a biological

627
00:55:40.840 --> 00:55:42.200
phenomenon.

628
00:55:42.200 --> 00:55:47.800
It is neither more nor less natural than any other feature of the species Homo sapiens,

629
00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:51.080
For instance, the upright gait, or the hairless skin.